Report: PS4 powered by AMD's Liverpool APU

Trent Nouveau, 8th June 2012

A new report indicates that Sony's next-gen Playstation 4 Orbis console will be powered by a quad-core AMD APU.

According to PSX-Sense, the processor - codenamed "Liverpool" - is based on AMD's upcoming Steamroller core. The chip is slated to be fabbed at 28nm and expected to clock in at a sweet 3.2GHz.

As Alistair Lowe of Hexus points out, while AMD APU technology is progressing at an impressive rate, on-die GPUs still aren't powerful enough to drive a high-end console.

As such, the PS4 is expected to include a discrete Radeon HD 7970 GPU.

Nevertheless, paired with a GCN-based on-die GPU, Liverpool is likely to be one of AMD's first APUs to offer support for heterogeneous computing.

As expected, other PS4 details such as memory remain understandably vague, as Sony seems to be vacillating between 2GB-4GB - with developers pressing for the latter option.

However, PSX-Sense claims the PS4 will once again feature a Blu-ray drive, along with an HDMI 1.4 port and a maximum output of 1080p, rather than 2048p. Additional specs include 16GB Flash Memory for the OS and subsequent patches, as well as a 320GB + HDD.

"It's clear that the [above-mentioned] specifications would see Sony either break-even or make a loss on the sale of the PlayStation 4," commented Lowe.

"However, with less initial investment and, in the long run, the ease of x86 and heterogeneous computing will hopefully see more and better game and thus, more profit, which is where the firm really makes its money and, this is what will keep exclusives out of the hands of competitors."